Join Our Team at NEXUS Personalized Health
The ETH Zurich technology platform NEXUS Personalized Health is at the forefront of discovery and translational research for personalized health. We provide a diverse range of expertise across Clinical Bioinformatics, Biostatistics, Software Engineering, Systems Operations, and Screening & Lab Automation.
Within this multi-disciplinary environment, our Software Engineering group develops data-centric software products that transform biomedical and clinical data into practical applications. The team consists of five dedicated members and supports a wide portfolio, from internal tools and research platforms to collaborative applications with clinical partners.
Position Overview: Group Leader Software Engineering
As the Group Leader for Software Engineering, you will lead a dynamic team responsible for designing and building software products across a diverse range of research and translational projects. Your role will encompass delivery accountability, engineering standards, and long-term maintainability. A crucial aspect of your responsibilities will involve building and maintaining a robust project pipeline through active stakeholder management.
Key Responsibilities
- Project Management: Structure and oversee projects end-to-end, ensuring clear scope definition, milestone planning, risk management, documentation standards, and processes aligned with translational and clinical quality requirements.
- Technical Leadership: Set and enforce standards across architecture, code quality, testing, documentation, and maintainability.
- Delivery Ownership: Lead delivery across multiple concurrent projects, translating real needs into clear scope, milestones, and outcomes, even when requirements evolve.
- Project Acquisition and Customer Management: Build relationships with researchers, clinicians, hospitals, and partners, turning initial conversations into scoped proposals with clear trade-offs.
- Full-stack and Data-centric Systems: Guide end-to-end solutions from database modeling to API design, user-facing web applications, and dashboards using technologies such as Postgres, Django REST Framework, and Vue.js, along with cloud-based ELT solutions like Databricks in combination with Data Build Tool (DBT).
- Internal Product Portfolio: Transform project work into reusable building blocks and tools that enhance NEXUS’s internal offerings.
- Security with Pragmatism: Drive solutions that balance openness and necessary restrictions, minimizing security friction while maintaining appropriate protection.
- Handover Mindset: Ensure systems are built to transition smoothly into real-world research use and clinical applications, with clear ownership boundaries and comprehensive documentation for predictable handovers to Systems Operations.
- Cross-team Collaboration: Collaborate closely with Clinical Bioinformatics, Biostatistics, Systems Operations, and Screening & Lab Automation to deliver integrated end-to-end solutions.
- People Leadership: Recruit, mentor, and develop team members while fostering ownership and continuous improvement.
- Resource Management: Plan capacity, prioritize work, and contribute to budgeting and reporting for the group.
Self-Check: You Will Thrive If...
- You take pleasure in building software used in real clinical and research contexts, where quality and impact are paramount.
- You take ownership of delivery outcomes and enjoy leading both projects and people—not just implementing features.
- You are invigorated by working across a diverse portfolio of projects and stakeholders rather than a single stable product.
- You relish consultative work: building relationships, scoping initiatives, prioritizing effectively, and managing expectations.
- You proactively consider security and compliance when handling sensitive data.
- You can drive delivery across stakeholders while ensuring projects remain on track without compromising quality.
- You enjoy creating reusable components and pragmatically enhancing engineering standards.
- You are comfortable navigating ambiguity and can transform incomplete requirements into staged, testable deliverables.
Qualifications
- Non-Negotiables:
- Proven leadership experience in software engineering.
- Proven experience leading delivery across multiple stakeholders and projects.
- Strong stakeholder skills: trust-building, scoping, expectation management.
- Proven experience designing and implementing data-centric software solutions end-to-end (database, APIs, web applications).
- Strong Linux/Unix experience, scripting (bash, Python), and a practical automation mindset.
- Containerization experience (Docker or comparable).
- Excellent communication skills in English.
- Strongly Expected:
- Track record of establishing team-wide practices: code reviews, testing strategy, CI/CD, release process, documentation standards.
- Experience building software for security-conscious environments with pragmatic judgment.
- Advantageous:
- Data engineering experience (ETL/ELT design, validation, interoperability patterns).
- Experience working with hospital IT contexts or clinical workflows.
- Knowledge of German.
Why Work With Us?
At NEXUS, we value knowledge exchange and teamwork where everyone contributes their expertise. We maintain flat hierarchies and a proactive attitude. Our benefits include flexible working hours, family-friendly working models, ample training opportunities, and the chance to work in a dynamic field at the cutting edge of translational research.
Apply online using the form below. Only applications matching the job profile will be considered.
Contact Us
For more information about NEXUS Personalized Health, please visit our website. If you have questions regarding the position, please reach out to Daniel Stekhoven at stekhoven@nexus.ethz.ch or David Meyer at meyer@nexus.ethz.ch (please note no applications will be accepted).
For recruitment services, the GTC of ETH Zurich apply.